Love, Simon
The teen movie gloss of Love, Simon is familiar, but this winning tale of a gay teen looking for love is so warm and witty you won't begrudge its mainstream story beats
What’s remarkable about the eponymous protagonist of the blissful and witty Love, Simon is how unremarkable he is; quirks are not his thing. As played by Nick Robinson (best known as the cocky teen from Jurassic World), he’s a pleasingly average 17-year-old – not a brain, a jock, a basket case or any of the other teen movie archetypes invented by John Hughes. In his high-school production of Cabaret, he’s part of the chorus, and he seems happy in the background.
Simon does have a secret though: he’s gay. Being 2018, this doesn’t make him any less ordinary. There’s already an out kid at school who’s owning his genderqueer identity and taking down the school’s few homophobes with wonderfully bitchy one liners (“you look like you got gang banged by a TK Maxx”). And there’s at least one other gay kid in his grade: he calls himself Blue, and describes his loneliness on the school’s unofficial gossip blog.
Simon, heart-pounding that he’s found a closeted kindred spirit, replies to Blue’s post instantly under his own alias (Jacques). So sets in motion an irresistible teen romance that’s as light and sweet as candy floss, as well as a charming mystery as Simon tries to figure out which of the guys at school might be his anonymous pen pal – he just hopes to god it’s not any of those greasy geeks with Jon Snow obsessions.
The surface of Love, Simon looks superficial, but beneath the glossy visuals and the power-pop soundtrack there’s something quietly radical. We watch Simon come out at least three times in the movie, including a moving confession to his parents. Mom (Garner), takes it like a trouper and should be fighting it out with Call Me by Your Name’s Michael Stuhlbarg for Parent of a Gay Teen of the Year Award. Dad (Duhamel) plays it less cool, but he does suggest signing Simon up to Grindr (“it’s Facebook for gay people, right?”)
Pleasingly, there’s no subterfuge or elision of Simon’s desires to find love and none of the cliches of gay cinema are standing in his way. By the end he’s not left staring wistfully into a fireplace thinking of what could have been, and that’s what makes this breesy rom-com so essential. Gay characters deserve their cheesy finales too. “Things are going to get romantic as f”, Simon warns us near Love, Simon’s close. Bring it on.
Released by 20th Century Fox